"Geriatric
hi-tech
action-packed
spoof caper film that starts out semi-believable
and ends on an
unbelievable
low point."

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Phil Alden Robinson ("The Woo Woo Kid"/"Field of
Dreams"/"The Sum
of all Fears") weakly directs and cowrites with
Lawrence Lasker and
Walter
F. Parkes this geriatric hi-tech action-packed spoof
caper film that
starts
out semi-believable and ends on an unbelievable low
point. Sneakers, a
post-Cold War thriller, at one time might have been
considered a slick
liberal venture into conspiracy trails, but today
Sneakers can be more
clearly viewed as a worn down low-tech thriller that
feels
uncomfortable
and strained.

A group of five renegade computer hackers, all
with
shady pasts,
who work for private corporations to do security
checks, are hired by
the
government to steal a black box, containing a
code-breaking machine,
from
the genius mathematician, Dr Gunther Janek (Donal
Logue), who invented
the device. The motley group is led by the mysterious
Martin Bishop
(Robert
Redford). The others are Crease (Sidney Poitier), a
former CIA agent
who
was forced to resign; Mother (Dan Aykroyd), a
conspiracy theory nut and
gadget maven; Carl (River Phoenix), a 19-year-old
computer hacker; and
Whistler (David Strathairn), a blind man who has a
genius for audio
technology.

The National Security Agency men blackmail Martin
into
doing the
job because they have learned that Bishop is the alias
for Martin
Brice,
who in 1969 escaped arrest by the FBI as a hacker
because he is away
getting
pizza. Unfortunately his best friend Cosmo (Ben
Kingsley) is caught and
is sent to prison. The government boys promise to
erase Martin's
criminal
record and give his team $175,000 for the job. When
the team
successfully
snatches the box, they learn that they have been duped
to steal a
device
that is invaluable because it can infiltrate any
computer encryption
system
in the world and that governments would kill to have
such a valuable
tool.
Soon Marty learns that the thief behind the operation
is the slimeball
Cosmo, who is both seeking revenge against his former
pal by framing
him
for the murder of both the mathematician and a Russian
diplomat named
Gregor
and is using the device for his new associates in
Organized Crime to
keep
the government off their backs.

Mary McDonnell is around as good ole Liz, Martin's
former
squeeze
who once again gets involved with him after being
estranged for many
years.

Sneakers was the forerunner of a series of equally
weak
hi-tech thrillers
adapting to the computer age – The Net (1995), Hackers
(1995), Mission:
Impossible (1996), and Antitrust (2001).